We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
The cost of one bad teacher for one year on an average classroom of students is a whopping $266,000 in that class's collective lifetime earnings, which is over $2.6 million which that lousy teacher will cost society over ten years, or possibly $7.8 million over the teacher's tenure.
That's just one bad teacher. Multiply that by the possibly tens of thousands of wretchedly bad teachers whom the teachers' unions protect, and you realize the cost to society of our monopolistic public school system.
So says Robert Redford. (But, I ask, who will stand up against Big Hollywood?)
I think our readers understand that this is not about "Big Oil." "Big Oil" is a straw man. This is about a supply of cheap energy for Americans, and a supply that does not come from the Middle East or from Venezuela. The moonbats, who depend on energy as much as I do for daily life, appear to believe that it grows on trees.
How does Redford heat all of his houses? And does he care what it costs him? Would he care if his estate in Aspen lost heat this winter?
During his campaign, Obama promised to raise the cost of energy. He and his EPA have been doing their best to do that. Makes no sense to me. Now Canada's fuel will be used in China instead of here. What sort of accomplishment is that?
Improving graduation and transfer rates won’t be easy, in part because of the preparation of students who come to City College. More than 90 percent need remediation, and 36 percent are under the poverty line.
Perhaps they should worry about their high schools first...
As a frequent ship passenger, I can say that that means nothing. On large ships, it's not like the Captain is at a steering wheel. Departing the ship before all customers are off is another matter. Still, it seems odd to me that they cut so close to shore. As they say in the Navy, "We don't want Captains with bad luck."
How Stimulus Spending Ruined Buffalo - Four decades of subsidies and high taxes haven't arrested the city's decline, but here comes New York's governor with another billion dollars.
All the signs of a government-triggered death spiral
Captain Pete Hegseth, US Army, has served at Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan, and was Executive Director of Vets For Freedom to support our troops and missions. No weak sister.
During his current deployment in Afghanistan, Hegseth has sent email letters home to those on his mailing list. His most recent arrived today, "Endgame in Afghanistan." It is near 4-thousand words long, so I have put it below the fold. Hegseth is not optimistic, stripping away what he refers to as "wishful thinking."
This isn’t to say that we couldn’t affect a more advantageous outcome for the United States; of course if we got rid of the 2014 withdrawal deadline completely, were willing to truly remove Taliban and Haqqani safe-havens in Pakistan (we know where they are!), and purged the Afghan government of its most corrupt nodes we could “change the game” of this conflict. But for various reasons—be they domestic politics, a nuclear-armed Pakistan (a lesson for Iran, I would suggest), and a trepidation with undermining corrosive “Afghan sovereignty”—it is highly unlikely we will make the hard choices necessary to level the playing field. A bad outcome in Afghanistan isn’t inevitable, but in light of current realities, it is likely.
He believes this battleground is "central to defending the United States."
In the realm of perception and international opinion it is still very important; how we “finish” in Afghanistan will send strong signals to the rest of the world about whether we finish what we start. Recent events in Iraq make this plainly clear. However, the question is whether the cost in Afghanistan is worth the outcome?As my British colleague says, “is the juice worth the squeeze?”I think seeing this through, while gradually drawing down, is worth doing.
According to defense analyst Anthony Cordesman the US will need to spend about $10-billion a year for the next 14-years to stand a chance of stabilizing Afghanistan.
We do not need more good intentions and vague promises from the Obama administration. We do not need a vacuous set of positions from Republican presidential candidates who either do not understand the issues or fear addressing their cost. If the United States is to make this commitment we need to start making it now in every part of our posture and spending in Afghanistan — and be clear that we will do so through 2025. If not, we need to be honest about the consequences for some 30 million Afghans and their country.
There's so much detail and stark facts in Hegseth's email that you would be remiss to not read on.
Working people frequently ask retired people what they do to make their days interesting. Well, for example, the other day, my wife-Annie and I went into town and visited a shop.
When we came out, there was a cop writing out a parking ticket. We went up to him and I said, 'Come on, man, how about giving a senior citizen a break?'
He ignored us and continued writing the ticket.
I called him an "asshole". He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn-out tires. So Annie called him a "shit head". He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first.
Then he started writing more tickets. This went on for about 20 minutes. The more we abused him, the more tickets he wrote.
Just then our bus arrived, and we got on it and went home.
We always look for cars with "OBAMA 2012" stickers. We try to have a little fun each day now that we're retired. It's important at our age.
"I've often been asked, 'What do you old folks do now that you're retired?' Well, I'm fortunate to have a chemical engineering background, and one of the things I enjoy most is converting beer, wine and vodka into urine.
Lubel is a nut (see his other Youtubes. I know a nerdy guy from Long Island who reminds me of him, who has always gotten lots of girls into bed not from his looks or achievements but from plain cheerful confidence and an optimistic, animal openness about his desires):
Marines urinating on the dead? This is war. - The video of US marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters has shocked many. But the dehumanizing of the enemy was much worse back in the day.
In America, the poor do not stay poor, and the rich do not remain rich. Overall, in the US, both great wealth and difficult poverty seem to be transient. I am opposed to the death tax because it discourages people from building a secure and independent future for their kids and grandkids.
Of course, death taxes seem not to affect the very wealthy.
From the latter link:
...if upward mobility is so common, why are there still plenty of poor people in this country? In a recent video about income mobility hosted by the Institute for Humane Studies, economist Steven Horwitz of Saint Lawrence University explains:“Immigrants and young people entering the labor force come into that income distribution at low levels of income. They become the new poor when the old poor slowly move their way up.” Horwitz concludes that “even though a first glance at the data may make it seem as if the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, the reality of the United States in the early 21st century is that everyone is getting richer, poor and rich alike.”
But-but-but, his computer models proved the link between good health and red wine. So whats the problem? So what if he made up a few numbers and tweaked the model to coincide with his theory, nothing new, everyone does it. Hey, the more red wine I drink, the better I feel. That’s all the modeling I need.
Yesterday, Warren Buffett did something that was, in my opinion, outlandish and childish. He says he felt guilty for his comment about needing to pay more in taxes, so he took it upon himself to offer a dollar for dollar match for every extra payment a GOP member of Congress makes. Except for Mitch McConnell, who he will match 3 to 1.
Buffett is mistaken on several levels. First, as the linked article points out, why weren't Democrats and Obama included in this dare? Clearly this is Buffett's partisan nature and bias showing through. He is seeking to demonize one party over the other, without justification. I haven't seen Democrats lining up to make extra payments, nor have I seen Obama going 'over and above'.
Secondly, and more importantly, I shouldn't have to see anybody making extra payments. Not Buffett, not Democrats, not Republicans, not Obama. Making these payments is a personal decision, not a public one. Buffett went public with his statement last year that the wealthy should pay more taxes. Maybe they should, but I don't think that's a real issue. If Buffett wants to pay more, and T. Boone Pickens doesn't, let one send in the extra check as he sees fit, while the other chooses not to. Buffett went public, so he is turning this into a game. It's a game I'm not interested in, unless it is done fairly. Buffett rigged this game from the start.
He is more interested in making certain politicians look bad. I think it makes him look bad.
...the German vision of a Europe transformed into virtuous northern savers who play honestly and conscientiously by the accepted rules of the game looks hopelessly unrealistic, and never so more than now as the Italians get into the game.
Herbert London: The Failure of the Century's Grand Experiments:
If there is one obvious condition associated with the last century, it is the lack of government humility. Among the century’s leadership there was the self confident belief that “good ideas” will trump tradition, customs, history, even instinct. There were scarcely limits to political ingenuity. Here was the triumph of positivism, the assumption that rationality can subdue emotion. The engineers were in history’s driver’s seat and the lights appeared to be synchronized in green. Somewhere along the way things went wrong and the lights turned crimson...
You might suppose that the anti-Vietnam press corps might have approved of this demonstration of independent thinking. But Romney was, after all, a Republican. Moreover, as White makes clear, he was a particular kind of Republican — naïve, innocently moralistic, and old-fashioned — qualities that the liberals in the press were inclined to loathe. Within days, the “brainwashing” quote was everywhere. Eugene McCarthy added a cruel but amusing quip that no brainwashing was needed as “a light rinse should have been sufficient.” Romney’s polls tanked. He was finished.
It's usually pretty good, satisfying, and adequately-compensated, but right now it's a bit of a bummer. The biz is slow and quite stressful, and it (corporate communications, PR, investor relations, marketing, etc.) is a good measure of the condition of the US economy.
Perhaps this is my winter depression, DSM 4 "Life sucks." I have not been skiing often enough. My bonus this year is half of last year's. I need a new hot girlfriend who can appreciate my annoying quirks and bad habits. Why can't the government give me some money and some cute sweet girls just be be my wonderful self, so I can go protest something, or go back up to Sugarloaf for a few days? I blame Obama. Everybody always told me that I was very special, wonderful and talented, but maybe they lied.
If my next big deal goes through this week, we can delete this post. Plenty of difficult work is all I want. If I am not working 7 days/week at my age, I feel like I am wasting my time. Thankfully, I am no Euro-weenie, and don't have a union job like my Dad did where they prevented you from working too hard or too long.
The country’s largely suburban and increasingly Southern electorate does not see big government as its friend or wise liberal mandarins as the source of its salvation. This sets up a potential political crisis between those who know what’s good and a presumptively ignorant majority. Obama is burdened, says Joe Klein of Time, by governing a “nation of dodos” that is “too dumb to thrive,” as the title of his story puts it, without the guidance of our president. But if the people are too deluded to cooperate, elements in the progressive tradition have a solution: European-style governance by a largely unelected bureaucratic class.
The tension between self-government and “good” government has existed since the origins of modern liberalism...
Have you ever bothered to see what happens to your town's recycling? Those bins and things you put out there - where do they go? And are you charged for this extra effort of yours?
In my home town, we have to lug cardboard to the dump excuse me, recycling center. Newspapers, too. We are also supposed to separate glass from metal, and colored glass from clear glass, and plastic from glass.
For all of this self-applauding virtuously annoying pleasure, my most recent research reveals that ours all goes to a landfill in upstate New York, some is trucked to West Virginia to be dumped in a swamp or something, and some is burned by a subsidized power plant. There is no market for this "garbage" other than the marketplace for meaningless virtue. Glass, plastic, and newspaper, for starters, are far cheaper to make new than to recycle. Who is making money from this scam which makes naive soccer moms feel better about themselves?
Do me a favor and find out the facts about your local recycling - where does it all finally end up, and whether you pay extra for the privilege. Let us know. I think there's a news story in it.
If you are fascinated with Alzheimer's or are in love with Meryl Streep's phenomenal talents playing an Alzheimer's patient, see Iron Lady. If you have any interest in Margaret Thatcher as a person or leader of Great Britain, don't expect any of that in this movie. The non-Alzheimer's flashbacks probable amount to less than 20% of this disjointed movie, and are designed to conceal any utility of her policies or actions, such as when she is portrayed as viciously attacking the poor Argentinians despite the advice of her admirals.
In short, it is clear that Mrs. T and her politics were repugnant to the writers and producers, who are using Streep's fabulous talents in one of the more effective hatchet jobs (fortunately, the hatchet was so blunt the agenda is obvious to all).
Schools warn that 
Why God sends rain to Mexico but not to the Middle East 
Genius! 
Photo via 
Have you ever bothered to see what happens to your town's recycling? Those bins and things you put out there - where do they go? And are you charged for this extra effort of yours?